In Sudan and in New Film, War Crimes Questions Unanswered, Ahmad Harun's Narrow Escape Recounted

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in Africa
www.innercitypress.com/unsc2khartoum060408.html

KHARTOUM, June 4 -- As UN Security Council members in Khartoum prepare to visit Darfur tomorrow, in New York International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo finalizes testimony and, it's said, an additional indictment. Already indicted Ahmad Harun has reportedly been involved in Khartoum's battle in the south at Abyei. A 17-minute film just put online by the Aegis Trust shows blurry-faced survivors of attacks on three towns in Darfur naming Harun as providing money and orders to Ali Kushayb, to directed looting and killing. Omda Yahya is named as one direct victim of Kushayb. Click here to view the film.

In one clip, Ali Kushayb is said to claim to have killing orders directly from the president, called on his "thuraya" or satellite phone. Still, when Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador John Sawers, co-leader of the Council's visit to Sudan, if he intended to mention the ICC indictments in meetings with President Omar Al Bashir, or today with his advisor Nafie Al Nafie, Amb. Sawers said the meetings would be confidential. Speaking on June 3 in Juba in South Sudan, Sawers did not not mention the indictments in the list of issues he said he would be raising.

Regarding efforts to execute the arrest warrants, a story has emerged, a close call for Harun. He was to travel to Mecca in December for the Haaj. While his defenders advised him to go primarily by land, with a bit of sea to Yemen, he had decided to save time and fly. Meanwhile the ICC, it brags, had convinced some neighboring countries to divert Harun's flight, force it to land and arrest him. A country that shares the Nile is thought to have been enlisted to help. At the last minute, Harun got off the plane.


Some say Harun was tipped off, some say by Saleh Gosh, described as among other things a U.S. national security asset who's passed on information about Al Qaeda suspects.

While the Aegis Trust online film goes out of its way to redact names of so far unindicted people, the website includes a "Wanted" poster of Musa Hilal, click here for view.

The ICC has been asked, why not also indict the rebels? Wednesday the press traveling with the Security Council is being offered interviews with alleged child soldiers recruited by the Justice and Equality Movement, some from Chad. The response is that no country has presented evidence. Of course this is passing the buck.

Sudan might well have proofs to show, but no interest in buttressing the legitimacy of the ICC. Speaking of which, with the U.S. still not a member, how can the U.S. applaud these indictments?

And how can the UK, which loudly played a role in the Security Council's referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court on March 31, 2005, now through Amb. Sawers said that faced with evidence of systemic killing of civilians in Somalia, the Council should not interfere by making any referral to the ICC, despite requests from Somali civil society? And what are Moreno-Ocampo, the Aegis Trust, et al. saying and doing about Somalia? These are questions for which answers will be sought, in Sudan, Chad and elsewhere. Watch this site.

Footnote in fairness on the Aegis Trust: this is the group which at UN headquarters, as reported exclusively by Inner City Press, when their display about Rwanda garnered complaints from Turkey about a reference to genocide against Armenians, consented to the display being taken down, and a line about "Ottamans" being inserted, along with other changes. One is seeking consistency, between regions, conflicts and continents, but finding little.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/unsc2khartoum060408.html